The present invention relates to filters for beverage brewing apparatus and more particularly to multilayer reusable filters for an automatic beverage brewing apparatus.
Various forms of beverage brewing apparatus are available. For example, there are manual apparatus as well as automatic apparatus. A typical beverage brewing apparatus, regardless of whether it is automatic or manual, infuses a brewing substance with a quantity of heated water. The brewing substance is retained in a filter and the infusing water is introduced and allowed to seep through the brewing substance and drain through the filter material. It is desirable to provide a filter material which is reusable, promotes consistent brewing and is easily cleaned.
One way to promote consistent brewing is to provide increased surface area to promote a predetermined metering of the infusion water through the filter material. A variety of filters have been produced which increase the surface area, most notably, corrugated paper filters. Corrugated paper filters have a pleated or folded surrounding edge to increase the surface area of the filter material. Such filters, however, are disposable and must be changed with each brewing cycle. A variety of reusable filters have been designed including a mesh material, which is woven, etched, or plated, and retained in a supporting structure.
A problem arises with the reusable filters since they are usually formed of a thin mesh material which is not conducive to the substantial flexing used to form the corrugated paper filters. As such, the reusable mesh filters typically do not maximize the surface area in the same manner as do the disposable filters.
In an automatic beverage brewing apparatus, a disposable filter has drawbacks since the purpose of the automatic brewing device is to minimize or eliminate the manual steps and the human interaction in the brewing process. Heretofore, a reusable filter for an automatic beverage brewing device has not been known to include a filter structure with an increased surface area.